Tag Archives: care

Another half-work / half-shlubbing-around weekend day. 😐 Cassi had the day off, so I went and got her so I’d have some company (and a helper) and so she could have time away from home. So, like the last time she was here, she’s been working on her stuff a little more and I’ve been working on my stuff more… using that bit of motivation that you get just from having someone hanging out. 😊

A couple different phone calls to the pharmacy this morning and they’re still having problems with getting any of my workers comp related medications approved. 😒 Ten minutes on the phone, then on hold, and then told that they were gonna have to make some calls to get things straightened out. Haven’t heard anything back from them for the past couple of hours, so I’ll be calling again after I finish this entry. I’m not even trying to get them before last month’s supply ran out. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Heh… and as I’m writing this I got another text notification from the pharmacy saying that one item is on order, another is ready – but with a $12 charge, and no info about the third. 😕 But this confirms the typical problems I have every month… because if there’s a charge on one of these, that meant it was run through my regular insurance instead of the one provided by workers comp. I guess twelve bucks won’t kill me though.

And even though it’s Saturday, I got an actual registered letter that I had to sign for, from that “home care” medical provider that I mentioned a few entries ago. It says that they’re letting me go as a patient (okay?) and that I need to find someone else… despite having never used their services and not knowing who this nurse is that supposedly tended to me a couple times. 😠 So I sent them another email, despite just talking to someone from there on the phone, telling them to knock it off with the bills and the mail. It’ll probably do as much good this time as it did last.

Meh… so that’s been the first half of the day. And yeah, I know that a lot of the entries in the blog lately have just been me bitching about the mundane and trivial, but believe it or not – some people do like keeping tabs on me and knowing how things are going, even people that aren’t relatives or close friends. It’s weird to have made what are essentially digital pen pals, from people who have found the blog and have then messaged me for one reason or another.

But I guess I better throw on some pants and head in town for the one script that I can pick up. 🙄 And like I told Cassi, the reason I go in there most of the time, and deal with this shit in person – it’s because people tend to work a little bit harder when you’re standing right there, telling them exactly how things are supposed to be, and nudging them in the right direction when needed.

Heh… this was quite a ramble for just some medical billing filling bullshit. 😏

Sometimes when you hear people talk about emotionally abusive relationships, they might say “Well, she knew what she was getting into when she got with him.” which implies that it’s the victim’s fault. 😟 But what I see is someone who may have been willing to give someone chance after chance to prove they weren’t that emotionally abusive person, because they care about the person and want to believe that things could change.

Well, sometimes they don’t change. 😔 And eventually, even though it’s difficult, even though you care about that person, if their actions are really messing you up… you do have to take responsibility for how you allow yourself to be treated and get yourself out of that situation. That person might actually even care for you as well, but if it doesn’t prevent them from saying or doing hurtful things, why would a person want to keep subjecting themselves to it?

They may not realize how much what they are doing is affecting you, or they might not even realize that they are doing it at all. 😐 Who knows… they might know exactly what it’s doing but not be able to stop themselves from doing it. No matter the case, you have to do what’s right for you, even if that makes you “the bad guy” in their eyes. And if they don’t think that what they’re doing is that bad, then “the bad guy” is exactly the way you’ll seem to them. 😒

*sigh* … 😞 and in almost all of those types of cases, it didn’t have to be that way…

A month or two ago, Dad asked me if I’ve ever had moments where for no real reason, you just get a “content” or unexplained happy feeling that comes over you. 🤔 At the time I said no, but I think that how I’ve been feeling these past couple of days is what he was talking about. No real reason to be in a good mood, but here it is… for me to not exactly know what to do with it. 😏 Genesee keeps telling me to not dwell on it and just let it be, which is obviously the correct answer. 😁

After all of my appointments this week, I agreed with myself that today should be a day off. I did that with the intention of tricking myself though, because whatever I actually do accomplish by the end of the day – it’s now all just “bonus” stuff. 😊 So that’s been today… staying at home, inside my bubble (so nothing can accidentally crap up my mood), while working on office/organizational type things. 🤓 No need for details because I’ve already covered it in recent entries.

My PCP appointment yesterday was a mix of good and bad, which is what I expected. 😕 And rather than doing the referral to the psychiatrist (that I never got around to from the last visit) I told her that I’d compromise and set up some appointments with a therapist. 👩🏻‍💼 I already had plenty of stuff that I could have talked about, and that was before learning about my whammy medical condition. But I’ve always liked therapy, the handful of times that I’ve gone… so why not.

If my mood maintains I might go for a walk around Alley or Rising Park tomorrow. I need to stop doing an impersonation of a potato every day… so I’m gonna try to find my misplaced passion for photography/videography and maybe use that as an excuse to leave the house. Oh, and every damn human that I encountered while out doing my runnin’ this week… they’ve been nice, polite, friendly, jokey, etc. 😯 Local society acting so welcoming that I almost felt “normal” being out among them.

Oh, and the hospital finally called today to let me know that they read my letter, and that they’ve talked about it with the people involved. 😳 That’s good enough for me. Acknowledgement. Being heard. I’m hoping that they did take my concerns seriously, but not so seriously that anyone got hollered at or suspended or worse. I ended the call by joking with her, saying that I don’t wanna end up “The Patient with The Scarlet Letter” though, should I ever have to return there for another procedure. 😅

So between feeling a little accomplished today, and then hopefully doing something distracting over the weekend, I should have a few good days before I have to field calls from the two new doctors’ offices that are supposed to be setting up appointments for me. 😬☎ I really hope that the next steps don’t interfere with the fair and Phil Collins concert. I could live without going to the fair, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna miss that concert. 😠 Especially since Jim got my ticket as a “no particular reason” gift.

Okay, time to find something good on Netflix and get back to work, but not.

Yesterday was a strange day. 😐 I feel good, having completed a bunch of stuff that I felt needed completing, but the nature of the stuff left me feeling a little uneasy – and definitely unable to fall asleep at a normal hour. 😕 Despite that, I managed to have some awesome dreams. Awesome enough to have actually woken me up every hour or so – but of course I can’t remember a single detail at the moment. 😠 I’m just lucky that they weren’t about the topic at hand yesterday.

Of course I expect my upcoming surgery to go fine, but being the type of person that I am I’ve gone into “prepare” mode – just in case it doesn’t. 😳 As part of that preparation process, I spent a good amount of time typing out letters to my cousin Jim and my ex-wife Genesee, as they would be the ones handling everything in the event that things need to be handled. Those letters are just my way of easing them into the process. (Since I was the executor for my aunt, I learned a few tips and tricks.)

They won’t even get those letters unless the situation calls for it, so that allowed me to be a little more free with what I said… but for the most part it was just explaining my will, explaining my wishes when it came to my personal belongings, explaining a good deal about how the process will go, and what they will need to do to keep things moving along, hopefully without too many hiccups and at a reasonable pace. 😎 It’s a lot to ask of someone, so I also made sure that my appreciation was made super clear.

But between the several pages that I wrote for Mongo, and then the three pages that I wrote for Gen… I was just doing a whole lot of thinking about a topic that nobody wants to have to think about. It wasn’t all bad… in fact, a lot of the thinking that I did was about good memories, good times, good things with family and friends, etc. 😊 Oh, and I’m up to 19 separate audio recordings when it comes to the little archive of messages that I’m recording for people to have and listen to after I’m gone… which, like I said, I don’t anticipate happening for a good long while. 🙂 I’m actually really enjoying doing that.

Don’t take this the wrong way. 🤨 All of this preparation is just being done out of necessity, and it’s something that any responsible person would want to do before a major surgery. 🤷🏻‍♂️👨🏻‍⚕️ It can just really mess with your head when you end up dwelling on the topic for too long. I’m still good though, and I know everyone that loves me has my back. 😏 I’m still optimistic about this surgery, I’m gonna get through it, and then whatever is next is next. One step at a time.

With a lot of stuff going on in my life, I kinda extracted myself from social media and real life friends for the better part of three months now… but after seeing Dez, it convinced me to get back on and start talking to my friends again. I’m just not anxious to figure out how to explain my absence, since it’s a combination of health problems, mental problems… you know… stuff that people always assume other people won’t really understand.

One of the first people that I checked in on was one of my friends who was just starting to go to his doctor for possible cancer related symptoms the last time we spoke. I talked to him today and he confirmed that it’s indeed cancer, and that it’s so bad they’re not trying to cure it. 😢 So he’s terminal, and the chemo is just to give him as much time as possible. He says it could be a couple of years, or it could be a couple of months. 😳 One of those deals where the doctors can’t be much more certain than that. 😞 It’s hard to know what to say to someone when you hear that kind of news.

I also checked in on my buddy Rick, from school, and it looks like his fight against hairy cell leukemia is still going strong. I haven’t spoken to him, but I see he’s posted pics from chemo treatments as well as something regarding bone marrow… so it’s good to see that he’s still got the required fight in him. 🏋🏻‍♂️💪🏻 There’s one more friend that I need to check in on like that, but she’s currently enjoying vacation time with her awesome boyfriend… and the last thing I wanna do is poop on the good mood by asking about her cancer status. 😬

Oh, the video above… it’s just one of my typical Hyperlapse videos, but shot out the side window instead of the windshield. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I don’t know what it is about the movement of the clouds that feels so peaceful. It makes me feel so small, and the beauty of the world feel so big. ☺ I’m hoping that I can get past all of the stuff that’s keeping me down right now, so I can get out and do some video or photos or something somewhere… watching the clouds churn makes me wanna be out among them.

I’m finally sending up the white flag and giving in to this nerve twinge thing that I’ve got going on. After talking to Dad, Cassi, and Genesee about it, and after suffering with this infuriating pain for the better part of a week, I’ve decided that I better go get it checked out. 🤕😟 Gen worked at a local doctor’s office when she was still living around here, so she’s possibly got an “in” with a couple different chiropractors. She’s gonna call tomorrow and see if she can get something worked out for me… oh, and I decided to try a chiropractor before the ER for a number of reasons. 🤨 Besides, the ER is still there if it turns out that a back doctor can’t help me.

Rather than sitting around all day and letting my frustration and anger build, I’ve decided to just stay in a comfortable seated position on the floor and get some work done… while watching a bunch of YouTube videos about stuff that gives me the “goody” feels. 😏 (History about Atari, Sega, Samantha Fox, Commodore, Jane Child, Nintendo, Klonoa, etc.) As for the “work” part… just a few minutes ago I printed out the final versions of my will, living will, health care directive, final arrangements, and a durable power of attorney for my finances. 😯😃🤓

Heh… no… I don’t expect to be going anywhere anytime soon, but I’ve had all these documents about 90% done for a while now. 🧐 So I just had to check the details and make a few tweaks, and now I just need to seek out a couple of witnesses and visit the notary at my bank. 👩‍👦👨🏻‍⚖️ Oh, and there will be no more sleeping in my bed until I get this nerve problem sorted. 🙄 My dumb ass… I knew it was a trap… but my bed can be so comfortable, and I wanted a good night of sleep so badly… but nope, constant pressure on that area = a bad idea, so it looks like I’ll be sleeping in the recliner until further notice.

I keep reminding myself how much worse it could be. 😳 I try to put myself in the shoes of the folks who still have to go to their jobs and put in a full eight hours while dealing with this pain. Sure, a TENS device helps mask the pain, but that’s no way to spend your day… working for “the man” while worrying about a)nerve pain randomly zapping you, and b) the TENS unit randomly zapping you. ⚡😣⚡ So, yeah… just trying to make the best of the day.

With all of the rain and warm weather, it’s getting to be about that time for mowing to start up again. I’ve already talked to my lawn d00d and got that all set up, but I still have to get out there and get things kinda cleaned up beforehand. I’ve got lots of plants that start growing before the first mowing even happens, plus the still-standing corpses of plants that grew and died last season… so I’m gonna do my best to get rid of all of that stuff, which will actually make the mowing that much easier for d00d’s mowing guys.

This work shouldn’t be too taxing, but I’m still planning on using the better part of a day to do it. Also today I’ve been gathering names and numbers for bush trimming services, so tomorrow I’ll be able to make some calls (hopefully) so I can get some estimates for the bushes around the house as well as the ones along the rear of the property. I hate spending money, but since I didn’t have anything done with them last year – I guess I can mentally take whatever it costs and divide it by two, telling myself that it was actually for service that covers two seasons of “bush stuff.”

Surprisingly, I got a decent night of sleep last night, so that’s gonna make today easier… half chill, half prepping for stuff that I need to do this coming week. I’ll be glad when all of the “outside stuff” has been handled though. It’s the same as the inside of the house… my brain just relaxes more easily when things are cleaned up and looking nice. And right now the outside of my property looks pretty rough.